Technical note: This page is set up for standard
monitors. On smaller laptops/iPads etc you may find some of the
photo captions are displaced. This is not a fault of the web page but of certain
browsers.

Rannoch School, as many remember it,
taken from the front cover fo the school magazine 1991-2

As Wavelets Eddy*

As
wavelets eddy round their chosen shore,

As
bees fly to their favourite flower,

And
old men seek again their boyhood places,

Remembrances
return.

And
should an old and memoried moment fade,

A
queue of others gather on parade.

Back,
waters, to your lochan’s ample store,

Go
visit, bee, some different bower,

Stay
veterans, stay long, gone are the faces

You
distantly discern.

But
ever and again the far off images revolve,

And
melancholy thoughts, half-beautiful, will not dissolve.

Dougal
Greig, Rannoch, 1968

* Written
by A.J.S.(Dougal) Greig, one of the three founders of Rannoch School and
Headmaster 1959 - 1966, shown to me in Edinburgh, March 2016 by James Mitchell
(Dall, 1963-1967). ** Jimmie helped care for Dougal Greig in his final years. Dougal
Greig’s “Rannoch” poems cover the years late 1950s – late 1960s and are about
people, places, events and the nature observed at or around Rannoch during his
time as headmaster at Rannoch School or just afterwards. Patricia Greig, one of
Greig’s three nieces, has given permission to include “As Wavelets Eddy” in
this account of my childhood.

** For
non-Rannochians it is important to know that Rannoch School had four main
boarding houses in the 1960s and 1970s: Dall, Wentworth, Potteries and Wade.
Former Rannoch School pupils still feel strongly attached to their house, which
is why I include this information when known.

Part 1

1. Why now?

My father, André Zaluski, a cheerful and optimistic person, was feeling
unusually depressed during the months of December 2015 and January 2016. Not
only was the weather abysmally wet in the north of England as the storms Desmond in early December, Ewa on Christmas Eve, Frank at the end of December, followed
by Gertrude at the end of January,
swept over north east England, preventing him from going on his daily walks,
there were other reasons too. Arthritis had set in at the grand old age of 86,
he was sleeping badly due to the unaccustomed stiffness of his bones and he had
family worries. So, what could be done? How best to get my father back to more
pleasant and enjoyable thoughts?

Then I
remembered being included in some emails between my father and some former
Rannoch "boys", or Rannochians as they call themselves, at the end of
January 2016. Rannoch. That’s it! Remembering our years 1963- 1981 at Rannoch
School would certainly bring back many happy memories and help lift his
spirits.

So, I
contacted Jimmie Mitchell, “Hon John” (John Mackenzie, present Earl of
Cromartie and Chief of the Clan Mackenzie, Dall 1961-1966) and Alan Beaton
(Wade 1960-1965, House Captain 1964-65, Head of the Mountain Service 1964-65).
They wrote kind email messages to my father. Jimmie mentioned the ExRannoch
website, I contacted Simon Stoker (Potteries 1962 – 1967) who sent him a copy
of the DVD "Echoes 3, Rannoch, The
Way We Were", a collection of Rannoch archive films and photos set to
music. We watched the DVD film together in March 2016 and my father proudly
explained to me – and later informed Simon by email – that he had, in fact,
been the producer of the Mountain Service “Rescue” section of the film. One can
see him at the end of the film (bald head plain to see) heading back to the Land
Rover. I found my father’s copy of the "Rannoch
Anthology, 40 Years On" edited by his former
colleague Alec Cunningham on his bookshelves, dusted it off and placed it where
he could easily reach it. By then my father was back to his usual cheerfulness,
a special mattress cover was enabling him to sleep well again and his arthritic
problems were progressively getting better.

Reminiscing about former
days at Rannoch has now become a frequent topic of conversation among my family
members. We remember our lives at Rannoch differently. I have totally forgotten
some aspects – such as the good school lunches at Kinloch Rannoch primary
school - but my younger sister Kasia told me, “Good Scottish fare, a bit
stodgy, but just what we needed for running around the playground.” Isabelle,
being the eldest, told me some interesting and unexpected memories she had,
some of which have been included here. My father has an amazing memory for
people’s names, locations and details. I could never have written this without
his help and willingness to answer questions covering everything from fishing,
the Mountain Service, teaching, Rannoch School colleagues, former Rannoch
School boys or the local people of Rannoch. More than once he admitted that he
was telling me facts or events he had never related to anybody else before.

Andre Zaluski, Sept 2016

I soon realized how little I knew about Rannoch School’s
history. Since then, Simon Stoker and Alan Beaton have been answering my
questions with humour and patience. It has been fascinating to read their
comments and recollections and wonderful for somebody with an interest in
history like me! Both have been most generous in answering my email enquiries,
remembering incidents over 40 years ago and suggesting new sources to contact.
We’ve had our share of laughs and I have thoroughly enjoyed my research. Many
thanks to all those who uploaded photos and documents onto the Rannoch School
Facebook group or contributed information about their teenage years at Rannoch.

Rannoch is a topic which we all enjoy reminiscing about and
occasionally even learning new details about then too, decades later. After
watching the film “Echoes 3, Rannoch, The
Way We Were” with my sister Kasia
and her husband John Dillon and discussing our time at Rannoch, Kasia suddenly
thought of a childhood incident, adding some extra details in a phone chat
later. "I remember when the primary school bus crashed into Mrs Fagerson’s
car (her husband, the Rev. Ladd Fagerson, was chaplain at Rannoch School from
the mid-1970s). It was in my last year at primary school (1975?). Mrs Fagerson
had her little son Danny in the passenger seat beside her. He must have been
about 2 years old then. When she drove round the bend of the road, poor Danny
was flung through the windscreen by the impact and had a nasty gash on his
head. In those days cars didn’t have seatbelts.

There was glass everywhere! Our
bus driver got such a shock that he refused to drive further. Mrs Fagerson sat
on the verge in shock. David and Andrew MacLellan were in the bus with me as
well as Frieda and Frank McGibbon who lived in Camghouran. I was sitting just
behind the bus driver, so wasn’t really injured, but the others had cuts from
the broken glass. A car passing by must have informed Rannoch School as their
Ambulance Service was the first to come to help us. I remember how they placed
Danny on their stretcher and covered him with a blanket. It was a nasty crash,
so were all grateful for the Ambulance Service’s help. Mummy kept me at home
the next day and Mr Wilson was very kind to us all when we returned to school.”

Chatting a couple of weeks later to my older sister Isabelle,
who, like me, lives in Switzerland, "Izzy,” I said, “I’ve been looking
through my Rannoch photos. Do you remember going sailing, the school raft
races, the Saturday evening films, the Christmas theatre productions …"

Kinloch Rannoch primary school, 55
children, 1975-76? Kasia is in the back row, 3rd from right.
The Maclellan boys and
McGibbon children are in the photo too, but I don’t know where.

"The raft races!"
exclaimed Isabelle. "I remember them. I also remember going out sailing
with Mick.” Our younger brother, Michael, was a passionate sailor, both then
and now. “We capsized and Mummy was standing dreadfully worried on the loch
shore, unable to do anything…”

On hearing of this incident, my
father commented to me on the phone, "Yes, it was June, a windy day and
the water was still cold. Really irresponsible of me to let you lot go out
sailing on such days."

That was Rannoch for us – freedom
to learn by doing. This included learning to right a capsized sailing boat on a
windy loch, my brother remembering instructions read and learnt in a "How
to Sail" manual, with not another boat in sight, no loch patrol service
and telling Isabelle, a novice herself, what to do. I also enjoyed sailing in
windy blustery weather, the windier the better. But I kept a constant eye out
for the centreboard of the boat. If I saw it while leaning out, I warned Mick
and he let out the sail. I also learnt to carefully watch the waves on the
loch, a stronger rippled structure warning me of rapidly approaching gusts of
wind. We never ever capsized.

At Rannoch we used our initiative
and made the most of the loch on our doorstep. Well, almost. Dall School House
where we lived from the summer of 1967 – 1981, was the nearest to the loch side
for sailing, rowing and swimming. There were also the hills and reservoirs
behind for walking, mushroom picking, ski-ing and skating.

Mick sailing on the Loch

Given a solid Scottish
education at the primary school in Kinloch Rannoch followed by secondary school
at Breadalbane Academy in Aberfeldy, we also benefited from the Rannoch School
facilities. We had a simple but idyllic childhood at Rannoch, only overshadowed
in the final years by my mother’s illness.

My father was never a Housemaster, but those who went to
Rannoch School at any time between 1963 – 1981 remember him well, either
because he taught them French or music, went with him on expeditions into the
Scottish hills, were involved in the Mountain Service or one of his theatre
productions, played chess or had choir practice with him. The Mountain Service,
or MS as most people called it, was my father’s main source of pride, hence his
delight at seeing the MS film again.

But why did my Polish father and
my Swiss mother decide to move from London to isolated Rannoch School in 1963
and then stay there for so long? First, though, a digression concerning our
name is necessary.

Part of Rannoch School photo 1966, André Zaluski is in the
2nd row, in the centre

2. A Family Name for Rannoch

At the end of December 2015, I
finally decided to renew my long out-of-date British passport as well as
organize new British adult passports for my 20- year-old son Charles and
16-year-old daughter Lena. Currently, British citizens living on the continent are
obliged to send their papers to Durham in northern England. So, all the
relevant documents were duly sent off together with a copy of my Swiss
passport, a more recent EU stipulation for all dual nationalities. A few days
later I received an email from a Miss Anderson. She could give passports to my
children but not to me as my name was different on my two passports. Surprised,
I had a closer look at my British passport: Barbara Maria Philippa Zaluski,
just as I remembered it. Then I checked my Swiss passport and London birth
certificate: Barbara Philippa Maria Thabasz-Zaluski on both. Oh dear! Why do we
have such a complicated double-barrelled Polish name? None of our Polish family
have or use a "Thabasz" in their names and, looking at our family
tree, right at the top there is only a Spytko Thabasz, followed by his son, Jan
Thabasz Załuski, Podkomorzy Rawski (Chamberlain of Rawa) 1436. Thereafter,
the “Thabasz” disappears.

My father explained. His own
father, Bogdan Załuski, decided on a whim to add the original family name
“Thabasz” to his name on becoming a British citizen in 1954. Proud of his
family’s history, perhaps he just wanted to be different. Anyway, his two sons,
my father André and my Uncle Iwo, influenced by him, followed suit. Hence, on my
father’s marriage to my mother in London in 1959 as well as on the birth
certificates of my sister Isabelle born in 1960, myself in 1961 and my brother
Michael in December 1962, we all have "Thabasz-Zaluski" as our
surname.

Up in Scotland, however, my father
quickly realizing that neither the locals, his teaching colleagues nor the boys
would be able to cope with such a name, dropped the "Thabasz". So,
when our passports were renewed in Glasgow in 1972, the "Thabasz"
thankfully disappeared, though somehow my middle names were mixed up then. My
younger sister Kasia, born at Glenrannoch House, Kinloch Rannoch in 1964, has a
beautifully handwritten Scottish birth certificate, with only
"Zaluski" as her surname. My father never had to use the "Thabasz"
again, although he has his original birth certificate from Cracow as proof
anyway. However, he still gets decidedly irritated whenever my mother receives
letters addressed to Mrs Thabasz.

So, my father became known as Mr
André Zaluski at Rannoch School, a trifle exotic, but reasonably easy to
pronounce and spell. Just to add a linguistically accurate note, the correct
Polish spelling is Załuski, pronounced “Zawooski”.

3. Some Family Background
Details &
“Farewell to the Fatherland”

My father, born Andrzej Michał
Antoni Załuski in Cracow, 11th
August 1929, was brought up at
the family owned spa of Iwonicz Zdrój in the foothills of the Carpathian
Mountains in south-east Poland, about two and a half hours east by car from
Cracow today. The spa was administered by his own father, Bogdan Załuski,
for the extended family. The Załuski family is otherwise best known in
Europe for the two Załuski brothers, bishops of Cracow and Kiev, who
founded the very first public library in Europe, in Warsaw in 1747. One of them
was even the first to introduce the potato to Poland. The Załuskis are
also known for their contributions to Polish culture, especially music, and to
the fight for Polish independence. General Jósef Załuski, who fought with
Napoleon, springs to mind.

An
only child for 10 years until his younger brother Iwo was born in February
1939, my father was brought up by a series of French or Belgian governesses and
taught at home by a tutor. He had various uncles, aunts and cousins at Iwonicz
village, neighbouring estates and elsewhere in Poland who met regularly at the
spa, especially during the summer season. Iwonicz Zdrój was one of the most
popular spas in pre-war Poland.

His
quiet family life at Iwonicz Zdrój ended abruptly in September 1939. My father
remembers hearing the German bombs falling on the nearby small town of Krosno.
His parents decided to flee. The next day he was bundled into his Aunt Tola’s
(Antonina Sidorowicz) Tatra sports car together with his 18 year old
half-sister Ewa Hierowska and his two year older cousin Jerzy (known as Maciek)
Lambor, who just happened to be visiting at the time. His parents and brother
Iwo, the two eldest teenage sons of his father’s sister and baby Iwo’s nurse
Pani Maria followed in a second car. However, his parents and brother had to
wait near the Polish-Romanian border, staying with friends, while passports
were organized. Great-Aunt Tola, my grandmother’s sister, who was a much
travelled and practical diplomat’s wife, US dollars in plenty on her, simply
wrote my father’s and his cousin’s names into Ewa’s passport and their
car was permitted to
cross the bridge over the River Dniestr and into Romania.
Soon after their escape, German planes bombed the bridge.

They travelled to Bucharest, then on to Budapest in Hungary
where they were joined by Great-Aunt Tola’s husband Władysław
(Władek) Sidorowicz, to Venice and finally to Menton on the French Riviera
where they stayed several months until the fall of France in May 1940. Maciek
and my father were sent to a boarding school in Cannes, the Institut Stanislas
run by a Marian priest from mid- November to May. Great-Uncle Władek
became the Polish consul in Marseilles. It was then that my father received his
first Polish passport, which I now have in my growing family archives in
Switzerland. Meanwhile, my grandfather, Bogdan Załuski, had contacted an
Austrian cousin, a member of a wealthy Austrian banking dynasty, the
London-based Count Antoine Seilern, to look after his family financially.
Thereby, he also ensured my father received a good private education in
England. My father remembers his flight from Poland as a pleasant adventure. He
enjoyed the travelling and staying in good hotels with his uncle and aunt, both
of whom had enough American dollars to ensure a comfortable “refugee”
existence.

In June 1940, after the Germans
had invaded France, the decision was made to head through Spain to Portugal.
They spent the next six months in Curia, a health resort in Portugal, until
berths on a ship could be organized. They sailed from Lisbon to Britain on the
“Avoceta”, landing in Liverpool on the 4th
December 1940. The date is clearly
stamped in my father’s passport. My father was 11 years old. The “Avoceta” was
torpedoed later in the war.

Page taken from the passenger list
of the “Avoceta”, found by Alan Beaton and sent to me on the 4th March 2017

Alan Beaton noted that all the Polish passengers on the
“Avoceta” planned to travel to Scotland. An explanation is that, after the fall
of France, most of the Poles who managed to excape from the continent travelled
to Scotland where the Polish Army was based. So, Great-Aunt Tola, Great-Uncle
Władek, Maciek, Ewa and my father first travelled to Glasgow where they
stayed at the Beresford Hotel, then to Peebles where my father’s, Maciek’s and
Ewa’s schooling were organized. In the spring of 1941, my father and Maciek were
sent, first to Avisford Preparatory School, then temporarily housed in the
Junior House of Ampleforth College in Yorkshire, and later to Ampleforth
College itself. Ewa was sent to the Polish Girls’ School at Scone Palace to
finish her maturity exams. Soon after she left Scone Palace, the school moved
to Dunalastair House near Kinloch Rannoch in August 1942. My father remembers
that his school holidays were either spent in Scotland or down in London,
staying with his uncle and aunt or with Ewa after she married.

Maciek Lambor, Pzemko
Kwilecki (a Polish cousin who had also escaped from Iwonicz
and joined the Polish Army in Scotland) and my father, Hay Lodge Hotel,
Peebles, 1941

It was at Ampleforth, quick at languages and already fluent
in French, that my father learnt to speak perfect English and his name was
anglicized to “Andrew”. My mother wrote her first letters to “Andy”, though
that soon changed to “André” as they talked French together. My father only met
up with his own father again in London in 1943. Bogdan Załuski had joined
the Polish Army in the Far East, but had unfortunately contacted a particularly
serious form of malaria there, “Blackwater Fever”, and had been sent to
England. Bogdan Załuski then became an adjutant for General Bronisław
Regulski, a Polish military attaché attached to the British army 1940- 1945.
Unlike most Poles, Bogdan Załuski could speak English as he had been sent
to a preparatory school in Brighton before the First World War. Only the
outbreak of war in 1914 prevented him from continuing his education at
Wellington College in Berkshire where his oldest brother Michał had been
sent. My father was only reunited with his mother and brother Iwo after the war
in 1946. Eight years later my father’s parents divorced.

More details of the Załuski family and their history can
be found in “The Ogiński Gene, The
History of a Musical Dynasty” by
Iwo Załuski, 2010. The original is in English, but there are translations
of this book in Polish, Russian and Lithuanian. Chapter 20 “Farewell to the
Fatherland” describes my family’s flight from Poland and the war years. It is
also the title of the best-known family piece of music by composer, statesman,
father of the Polish pianistic tradition and formative influence on Chopin,
Michał Kleofas Ogiński (1765-1833), who was my
great-great-great-great grandfather. He also wrote the Polish National Anthem,
as well as the Polonaise, “Farewell to the Fatherland”, Poland’s “unofficial”
anthem. More information can be found at www.oginskidynasty.com, my Uncle Iwo’s
website or just type in “Michal Oginski Iwo Zaluski Polonaise 13” in

www.youtube.com to listen to
the music. It’s lovely – if I may say so myself! My family is no stranger to
being exiled from Poland and/or having their property confiscated. The
Załuski family is still waiting for compensation for the illegal confiscation
of Iwonicz spa in 1944. Despite family protests, the Polish government sold the
spa in 2011. On the other hand, we are in the fortunate situation of belonging
to an extremely well-documented family.

Polish Pierogi

We never talked much at Rannoch
about Poland or my father’s childhood. Of course, we listened to anecdotes such
as my father’s memories of receiving a rather bad-tempered pony for Christmas
in 1935 or baby Iwo’s christening meal in the summer of 1939. We followed
Polish/Swiss traditions, had real candles in Swiss candle holders on our
Christmas tree and always listened to Polish carols from a record after our
Christmas dinner in the early evening of December 24th, after which
we received our presents. As a teenager, I once helped my father to make Polish
“pierogi”. They are similar to Italian ravioli, but messy to make, especially
with no recipe and only my father’s memories of what they should look like to
go by.

We also once made a special Polish sorrel soup
he remembered from pre-war days.Sorrel leaves were known as “juicy leaves” at
the primary school in Kinloch Rannoch, so easy for me to recognize and collect
behind the house. Otherwise, we were all horribly ignorant of our Polish roots.
Understandable really, as my father had only just turned 11 years old when he
had had to flee from Poland. My father concentrated on his life in Scotland.
His Polish childhood remained buried in his memories, only coming to the fore
when the Iron Curtain fell in 1989 and he could return to meet his cousins and
family in Poland once again.

Sorrell

Perhaps it was fortunate for
Rannoch School that my Great-Aunt Tola was unsuccessful with her choice for my
father’s career before he left Ampleforth College. Excellent at languages and
academically minded, my father told me Ampleforth would have likely got him
into Oxford. Instead, Great-Aunt Tola, officially his guardian, told Ampleforth
my father should study medicine. Ampleforth accepted this decision and his
sixth form subjects were changed accordingly. My father did pass his
mathematics, chemistry and the other science subjects necessary, but not well.
Aunt Tola studied medicine after the war and no doubt thought it would be a
worthwhile profession for her nephew. “It was a different period,” my father explained
to me. “At Rannoch that would not have happened. Rannoch School would have
persuaded parents that their son should study the subjects he was good at.”
Giving up on medicine, my father afterwards studied music in London and wanted
to become a concert pianist. However, this career choice was also abandoned
when he realized he suffered from stage fright and his interest in outdoor
sports was becoming more important to him than the piano. Thus, he started
taking on temporary teaching jobs, having a music college qualification but
neither a university degree nor a teaching qualification, but enjoying the work
nonetheless. My father was

highly intelligent, but not
ambitious. He could have become an excellent diplomat if the political
situation in post-war Poland had been different. His extended family would have
certainly helped and encouraged him. His Great-Uncle Karol Bernard Załuski
travelled widely in the far east as a diplomat for the Austrian Empire, writing
back to the family of his experiences and adventures. His Uncle Władek
(Great-Aunt Tola’s husband) had been the Polish vice-consul in Paris before the
war and was the Polish consul in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia when war broke out in
1939.

As it was, when the communists gained control of the region
around Iwonicz in 1944, the adult members of the family were thrown into prison
while their property was seized and Michał Załuski, head of the
family, and his brother Karol were sent to Siberia. In post-war communist
Poland, the Załuski family was forbidden to travel within 50 kilometres of
their former home at Iwonicz.

My parents climbing with two friends early 1960s

My father became interested in mountains after Ampleforth. In
1948 or 1949 he hitchhiked up to Scotland with his cousin Maciek Lambor, then
walked from Braemar to Aviemore, a thirty-mile route over the Lairig Ghru Pass
in the Cairngorms. He started climbing by simply buying a rope and hitchhiking
to north Wales, staying in a hostel there and learning from other climbers. His
very first climb was quite easy and he did it with another beginner. Later, he
spent one week with an experienced climber from whom he learnt a lot. He also
mentioned that he had a very good friend, an excellent climber, living in
London. This friend, Andrzej Kopczynski, belonged to a top English climbing
club, the Groupe de Hautes Montagnes. My father only managed to climb once with
him before Andrzej Kopczynski was tragically killed soon after near Chamonix,
France. After he met his future Swiss wife, Theres Künzli, in London, my father
also travelled regularly to Switzerland and the Swiss Alps for climbing,
mountain walking or ski-ing, outdoor interests they both shared. Hitchhiking
was fashionable then, my father tells me. My mother even hitchhiked with her
friend Sylvia around Britain. Once, they both got far enough north to be able
to go up Ben Nevis. My parents got married in 1959, soon after my mother
received her nursing qualification.

My mother’s family lived in Winterthur, where her father was
a printer. She had a sister, my Aunt Rosemarie, and two brothers, Uncle Alex
and Uncle Hans, all of whom were very generous to us during our childhood and
regular summer holidays in Switzerland. Swiss food parcels of chocolate,
biscuits, “Landjäger” sausages and a special herb “Schabziger” cheese were
always a highlight for us at Rannoch.

4. Heading North to Scotland

By the end of 1962 my parents had
three small children all under the age of five and a cramped rented flat in
London’s Kensington. My father wanted a steady teaching job in healthier
surroundings for his young family. Fortunately, Załuski family connections
helped pave the way.

Jossleyn Hennessy, whose mother
was a Seilern and grandmother a Załuska – he had visited Iwonicz in Poland
with his mother in the early 1930s - and his wife Laura, grand-daughter of
Victorian painter Sir Joseph Noel Paton, were living at the time near
Gordonstoun School, where their own children were pupils. They had met A.J.S.
“Dougal” Greig (Co-founder of Rannoch School, Dall Housemaster 1959-1966), then
a teacher at Altyre School, an independent part of Gordonstoun. Laura Hennessy
probably mentioned to Greig that my father was looking for a teaching post. As
Greig preferred employing teachers “from the right kind of society”, my father
was invited to visit Rannoch. “Nepotism”, my father calls it. In fact, in my
father’s opinion, one of the great achievements of Greig was that so many of
the early staff at Rannoch were Oxford or Cambridge graduates, persuaded by him
to participate in creating a new school in the highlands of Scotland.

And so, my father visited Rannoch
School in June 1963. He stayed with Pat Whitworth (Co-founder and Potteries
Housemaster 1959 – 1968) and his wife Jane, who were extremely pleasant and
welcoming. He had an interview with Greig, whom my father described as having a
slightly eccentric manner, but was nevertheless absolutely charming and
friendly. At the time my father sensed it was a happy school. He met “Hon
John’s” father, the Earl of Cromartie who was visiting his son, John MacKenzie.
The Earl of Cromartie mentioned that John was extremely keen on climbing,
something which my father was certainly able to converse about with him,
creating a good impression on both sides. The atmosphere at Rannoch being
fantastic, my father accepted the job offered and soon after the Zaluski family
packed up and headed north, in time for the new school year.

Rannoch
School was founded in 1959 by John Fleming, Pat Whitworth and A.J.S. “Dougal”
Greig. Rannoch comes from the Gaelic “rainneach”, meaning “fern” or “bracken”,
hence the fern leaf as Rannoch School’s logo. The school site was at Dall on
the south side of Loch Rannoch. Dall was also the seat of the Robertson Clan
(Clan Donnachaidh) until the estate was sold to the Wentworth family in 1860.
When Captain Bruce Canning Vernon Wentworth died in 1951 aged 89 years, his
heirs sold the estate to the Forestry Commission. They in their turn sold the
main building, some estate land and cottages to the founders of Rannoch School.

The 3 founders of Rannoch School,
John Fleming, Dougal Greig and Pat Whitworth.
Photo from www.exrannoch.com

5. Early Days at Rannoch,
Glenrannoch House

Glenrannoch House today

For the first term of the new
school year after the summer of 1963, the Zaluski family lived on the upstairs
floor of Glenrannoch House, located on the road towards the south shore of Loch
Rannoch. It is still, if my memory is correct, the last house on the right when
you drive out of Kinloch Rannoch heading towards the south lochside.

The lower flat was still occupied
by the previous French teacher’s mother. My father was brought in to replace
this teacher who had been dismissed for improper conduct. When the new Rannoch
School bursar was appointed, a Major P. W. Coventry who had previously been the
queen’s representative in Uganda (?), he and his family moved into the upstairs
flat with bathroom a few months later. My family then moved into the downstairs
flat, which had a kitchen side door and outside toilet. My father remembers
that the Coventry family had two daughters, both older than Isabelle. My
parents were permitted to use the upstairs bathroom once a week. Recently
returned to Britain, the bursar and his family were rather arrogant towards the
young foreign family living below. My mother probably felt it most.

Most of the teaching staff at
Rannoch School in the early years were bachelors or young married couples
without children. It was a good position to get one’s first teaching experience
at a school or have some time-out before or after university. My father
remembers being invited to a house-warming, pre-Christmas party in Kinloch
Rannoch. One of those was a popular teacher of English, History and Latin at
Rannoch School, a charming Etonian, a brilliant caricaturist, but also a lady’s
man who had been thrown out of the church. My father recalls that a wall of the
room was covered with bawdy caricatures of some of the staff of Rannoch School,
which highly entertained the guests. He also drove a vintage Bentley(?) car,
which he loved racing along the narrow roads at Rannoch. My father even
commented about him in his “A Rannoch Memoir”, (Rannoch Anthology, p. 130).
“Only one of us had the nerve to take the “New Green Bus” to its full speed.
What a sight it was to see him thunder at 75 m.p.h in it
past the Loch Tummel Hotel!”. When Ian Peebles, the Rannoch School carpenter,
bought the house some years later, he told my father that he had had to cover
the caricatures as they were unsuitable for his two young

daughters’ eyes. The house in question is to the right of the
country store “McKercher and McNaughton” (Schiehallion side) of Kinloch Rannoch.
This same man later had an affair with the wife of someone known to the Board of
Governors of Rannoch School, so his position became untenable. After
considerable pressure put on him by the Board, the headmaster Dougal Greig
dismissed him in 1965.

Michael, Isabelle and Barbara,
Glenrannoch House, 1964 or 1965

The
country Store today

Isabelle went to the primary
school in Kinloch Rannoch for one year before we moved to The Barracks, Bridge
of Gaur, at the other end of Loch Rannoch. She remembers that the teacher of
primary 1-3, a Mrs Creesy, was extremely kind. Isabelle had a lisp and for a
year Mrs Creesy taught her to pronounce words correctly while the other girls
played in the Wendy House at the back of the large school room. By the end of
the year Isabelle was delighted to be finally permitted to join her friends in
the Wendy House. Mrs Creesy was an excellent story-teller and Isabelle’s love
of reading was born then. Slates were used for learning the alphabet and
writing words. Both Isabelle and I remember getting a small bottle of milk
during the morning break, a government policy then to prevent vitamin
deficiency and ensure the growth of strong bones among children. Alan Beaton
commented, “You mention school milk – Do you recall that this was withdrawn by
Margaret Thatcher when she was Minister for Education? This gave rise to the
chants of “Thatcher, Thatcher, milk snatcher.”

There was even an annual visit
from a dentist at the primary school. Isabelle told me the lady dentist came in
a mobile dentist’s van, with everything necessary in it, a dentist’s chair for
the children and drills if necessary. When I went to the school in Kinloch
Rannoch two years later, the children were sent to a small room at the back of
the school, beside the dining room.

Kinloch
Rannoch Primary School

We adapted to life at Rannoch.
When my parents first met in London, my mother couldn’t speak English nor my
father German, so they communicated in a kind of French together. My mother did
not speak it as well as my father, whose French deteriorated to that of my
mother, with a kind of “pidgin Schweizer Deutsch” mixed in. Uncle Iwo recalls
the private joke they shared at the time. He was a frequent visitor to their
basement flat near London’s Baker Street, where he remembers my mother once
saying about Isabelle, a baby of just a few weeks: “Chéri! Elle a tout
gesickhhht sur le khhh-carpet”. My parents tended to use the first words that
came into their heads, regardless of the language. They used to call it
“tsaluskkkhi dialekkkkkht”, with an exaggerated Swiss German guttural “kkkh!”
sound. They continued in this mode for some years, gradually speaking more and
more English.

When we were small, my father wanted us to learn more than
one language. He would have prefered my mother to speak her mother tongue Swiss
German or even French to us, knowing from his own childhood experience how
quick children are at picking up languages. However, my mother thought it would
be too much

and insisted on only speaking English to us. My father encouraged
my mother to speak English to him, though. That was how my mother learnt
English. Nevertheless, we children did have our own special family words,
culled from our Swiss German and Polish backgrounds. So, for example, while our
Swiss grandparents were “Grossvati” and Grossmütti”, our Polish grandparents
were “Bunia” and “Tatuś”. We just copied our father’s use of“Tatuś”,
which means Daddy, and as we were never corrected or given an alternative,
still use it among ourselves today. There were other words like the German word
“Estrich” for attic or “taca” for tray (Great-Aunt Tola had taken and saved two
silver family trays from Iwonicz).

Kasia with her father, visiting Fortingall 1965

In the early 1960s cars were
expensive and, in fact, neither of my parents could even drive when they
arrived in Scotland. My mother no doubt walked into Kinloch Rannoch village
daily to buy food and give us children fresh air and exercise.

My father started and finished his
working day by cycling the 6 miles back and forth between Glenrannoch House and
the school during the first few months. Then, with generous aid from his
teaching colleagues, tips from Rannoch boys and practice in whatever ancient
school vehicle was available, he finally passed his driving test in Pitlochry.
By the start of his second term at Rannoch School he was already able to drive
school boys on various expeditions. There were always enough teenage boys
willing to help him, give additional advice, explain how to double de-clutch
and encourage him to drive along muddy uneven roads on expeditions.

My father started fly-fishing soon after arriving at Rannoch.
He used to go to a cheese shop in Picadilly, London, where he was served by a
Scot. While once chatting to him, my father mentioned he was moving to Rannoch.
“Good fishing there,” was the reply. My father took him at his
word. Soon after moving into Glenrannoch House, he bought a rod and some
fishing flies at a little gift shop just opposite Dunalastair Hotel in Kinloch
Rannoch, read some books on the subject and just started fishing from the loch
side. I remember accompanying him with Mick to this shop and gazing at the
fascinating and colourful selection of fishing flies for sale. Mick commented,
“I remember the small shop close to the bridge in Kinloch Rannoch. What I
remember is that it was there Papi learned to tie on flies in a way that the
knot did not loosen up (and thereby losing not only the catch, but also the
fly). I remember the technique, and still use it.”

The Zaluski family stayed in
Glenrannoch House for two years. Various family members and London friends
visited us during this time. Unfortunately, my parents never owned a camera
during their time at Rannoch School, but we still have some photographs given
to them over the years. My Polish grandfather and a Polish cousin, Jolanta
Załuska, visited us once some months after Kasia, the youngest, was born.
I also have a couple of photos of my father climbing at Craig Varr. My Swiss
grandparents visited us for Kasia’s birth, but they weren’t much help to my mother,
treating their trip to Scotland as a holiday. My father remembers having to
drive his father-in-law to dog breeders in Scotland, of all things! It was
their first and only visit.

I

Climbing at Craig
Varr, 1963?

Dall House 1966

By the time my father started teaching at Rannoch in September
1963 some incident had happened which adversely affected the atmosphere among
the staff at Rannoch School. My father doubts most of the pupils noticed it. As
my father explained to me, a new teacher was overtly stirring up trouble, abetted by the chaplain, likewise
new to Rannoch School. This man drove an expensive sports car. My father
remembers him and the chaplain bragging about how fast they could drive
over the humpback bridge at Camghouran, an attitude my father found rather
silly and childish. Later, there were differences between Dougal Greig,
struggling to cope with his multiple roles as Headmaster, Dall Housemaster and
teacher and the other Housemasters. Rumours started. Dougal Greig was seen
going outside past the masters’ common room with his arm round a boy. Greig had
just informed the boy that his father had died. Not an easy task for any
headmaster to do and Greig was trying to comfort the boy. Accusations followed.
This was not an easy time for Rannoch School and unfortunate in its timing. The
atmosphere between headmaster and staff deteriorated and by the summer of 1966
many of the original staff had resigned, been dismissed or simply left. Even
resignations made in the heat of the moment and rescinded later were rigorously
enforced. Criticism was not tolerated. In 1967 the editor of the Rannoch School
magazine wrote, “Since the last edition of “The Record” went to press, many
changes have taken place in the school. Perhaps in later years when time has
soothed aroused emotions, the history of this period might be printed in this
magazine.” The previous Rannoch magazine had appeared in 1964. Clearly by then
the boys knew of the problems facing the school. What had happened?

Perhaps an answer can be found in the success of Rannoch
School. The founders John Fleming, Pat Whitworth and Dougal Greig hoped for at
least 50 boys in 1959. The first intake was 82 boys, increasing to 138 the
following year and by 1962 there were already 209 (numbers found in archives
section of www.exrannoch.com). Some of the staff chose not to have a salary,
others were willing to be paid a reduced rate. It was the pioneering spirit of
the school that was exceptional. If one considers the sheer amount of work
involved in setting up and organizing a school in what was a remote part of
Scotland in those days, then the success the founders had in getting enough
boys and the necessity of providing enough accommodation, classrooms and other facilities
for the increasing number of pupils and staff alike at short notice as well as
dealing with the day-to-day school problems, one understands the pressures
involved. My father said that Dougal
Greig was a good headmaster, but there were limits to what anybody could do.
Greig had problems delegating and coping with criticism. By 1964 Greig had
appointed a private secretary, Anne Davidson, and a fulltime Bursar, Major
Coventry, and later persuaded E. J. Miller, a former headmaster teaching
mathematics at Rannoch School, to become Second Master. On the other hand,
Greig continued being the Housemaster of Dall and lived on the job in a room in
the main building. He would have had little free time during term time.

To cut a long story short and to keep in mind that the
Zaluski family is the main focus of this tale, important staff left or had to
leave Rannoch School between 1965 – 1966. These included John Fleming (1959 –
1965, Co-founder and Housemaster of Wentworth), the
Housemaster of Croft Junior House, Mike Haines (1959 – 1965,
Housemaster of Wade) who started the Mountain Service, a year later Dougal
Greig (1959 – 1966, Co-founder, Headmaster and Housemaster of Dall) due in part
to mental health problems, followed later by Pat Whitworth (1959 – 1968,
Co-founder and Housemaster of Potteries). On reflection, my father believes
that although the board of governors did not understand the original aims and
ethos of Rannoch School, they were decisive. Mr Miller’s appointment as interim
headmaster provided the Board of Governors with enough time to select a new
headmaster, Peter McLellan (1967 – 1982), who took up his position in April
1967. Under Peter McLellan’s leadership Rannoch School recovered and thrived.
He was an excellent administrator for Rannoch, says my father. However, the
early enthusiasm and pioneering spirit while creating a new school dissipated
with the departure of the original founders, Mike Haines, David Barry and
others. It is remarkable to consider what they achieved and built in the space
of a few crucial years, much of which still exists today. It is also so easy to
forget that, for example, Rannoch School was only connected to the electricity
supply from the village in 1963, an expense which John Fleming considered
well-worthwhile.

What happened then is now history. My father survived what he
calls the staff “sweep out”, together with, for example, Peter D. Orton (staff,
1960-1981), well-known for his research on mushrooms and beetles, who taught
biology and music, and Dr D. R. J. Wallace who taught biology. In retrospect,
what is most important to everybody concerned is that Rannoch School continued
in business.

How did it affect the Zaluski family? Well, my father wisely
kept himself out of it, never asking any questions nor giving an opinion about
what was being discussed in the Masters’ Common-room. By staying on the
sidelines, my father was considered “loyal” to Rannoch School. Perhaps that was
why Miller approached my father in 1966 about the position of Second Master. My
father declined, stating that he didn’t feel ready for the job and soon after
Alec Cunningham (Wade Housemaster and Second Master, 1966-1987) was appointed.
An experienced teacher and highly-organized, it was Alec Cunningham who
introduced the Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme to Rannoch School. As my father noted in “A Rannoch Memoir”, “His
(Cunningham’s) expeditions were so well and meticulously planned, that at least
in my time, nothing ever went wrong.”

Dougal Greig often returned to Rannoch later. My father met
him a few times down at the loch side, when they would chat together. It was
then that Greig wrote some of his poignant and sad poems. Years later when my
father wrote a letter to “The Times” on the subject of how to cook porridge
correctly, Dougal Greig saw it and wrote back to my father. Likewise, Mike
Haines also really suffered from having to leave Rannoch. He often visited us,
staying at Dall School House. My parents and sister Kasia once visited him at Fort
Augustus, when he confessed how much he missed Rannoch School.

6. The Barracks

Sometime in 1965 we left
Glenrannoch House when it was sold and moved into The Barracks at Bridge of
Gaur. Bought by Pat Whitworth’s mother who lived in part of it, it had been
turned into flats for some of the married teaching staff. We only stayed a year
at The Barracks, which was sold in 1967, but my father remembers my mother
being much happier there. It may also have helped that by then Isabelle, I and
even my brother, aged 6, 5 and 4 respectively, attended the one room local
primary school at Bridge of Gaur. The lady teacher there was very kind to us
all. I have vague memories of being permitted to place damp gloves on a big
warm oven in winter to dry and another of enjoying a summer picnic with my
mother and siblings beside the River Gaur.

Isabelle mentioned that we all
enjoyed sliding down the banisters at The Barracks. She also pointed out that
our mother made sure that we could swim at an early age. There was a part of
the River Gaur where there was a naturally calm pool of water. She taught
Isabelle and me to swim there by putting a hand under our stomach and getting
us to make swimming movements with our arms and legs. It is also highly
probable that my parents discovered the lovely sandy beaches at Killichonan on
the northwest side of Loch Rannoch then, ideal for us children.

7. Dall School House

In 1966 we were living at The
Barracks which we had to leave after a year. Without a new home we wouldn’t
have been able to stay at Rannoch. A family of six, we were unusually big by
Rannoch School standards. Was there ever such a big family at Rannoch School
later? I have no idea. It was Mr Miller, then temporarily acting as Headmaster,
who offered Dall School House as a home to my parents, encouraging them to stay
on and ensuring our continued “loyalty” to the school. Once the decision was
made, my parents only had perhaps 2-3 weeks to move in. There were so few
original teachers left at Rannoch by 1966 that I doubt there was much
competition for the residency at Dall School House anyway!

First photos of the Zaluski children at Dall School House

We
were therefore the first to move into Dall School House after Dougal Greig
acquired it from a St. Andrews’ Professor of Mathematics in the mid-1960s. It
was the former local schoolmistress’s house with an old wooden bridge and iron
handrail over a stream, connecting it with the small primary school building on
the other side. Isabelle told me that nobody had cleared up the mess in Dall
School House. There was rubbish in the rooms and our mother was really upset.
The photos above show that the garden was just overgrown grass. However, the
Zaluski family were glad to have been finally allocated their own home. The new
headmaster, Peter MacLellan, and his family had to initially manage with a
small flat in the main building from April 1967 until their new house was
built.

Isabelle
and Barbara

Mick
with Kasia in the wheelbarrow

Dall
School House was quite far from the main buildings of Rannoch School, at the
end of the back drive and near the loch. On the other hand, there were lots of
opportunities for adventure for us children. My parents cleared out the
rubbish, then set about painting the rooms, putting up curtains and generally
making it habitable. When we were a few years older, we were given a section of
garden which we could tend ourselves. The two photos show the fun we had!

About a year after we moved in my mother gave my father a
second-hand record player as a present. Thereafter, my parents often listened
to classical music or opera from records after the evening meal. They sometimes
entertained colleagues from the school in the evening and played bridge with
them afterwards, something both my parents enjoyed. Julian Ward and Michael
McIntosh Reid (Potteries Housemaster 1966-1973) are among those my father
invited. There was a constant stream of teachers at Rannoch School. Rannoch was
isolated and not every teacher or his wife could adapt. My mother made friends
among the other wives, but they often soon moved on. It can’t have been easy
for her over the years.

It was different for children. At Dall School House we played
at the stream which ran past the house, watched the trout swimming up to spawn
upstream, made dams and paddled in it in summer. We played in and around the
old primary school building - nothing was locked in those days. This school building
was a single room with a large high window at the far end and a vestibule at
the main entrance. There were also separate small children’s lavatories. The
old Dall primary school was where Mick built his first sailing dinghy from a
kit, but more about that in Part 2. There were few children for us to play
with. My father mentioned that Isabelle played tennis once with the MacLellans’
daughter. She was older than us and did not go to any of the local schools, so
I don’t remember her at all. One of the farmers at Dall had children and I
played with the oldest, Maggie McGibbon, perhaps two years older than me. We
often played together around the farm buildings before her parents left their
farm tenancy at Dall and moved to Camghouran further west along the south shore
of Loch Rannoch in 1971. I remember the midden in the horse shoe shape of the
farm buildings as well as the wheat and other crops growing along the road.

Mick and I often watched the boys with curiosity while they
were sailing, canoeing or rowing on the loch during those early years, hidden
in the trees at the loch side as we were rather shy. Mick remembers, “From the
moment we came to Rannoch School, we spent a lot of time at the loch. One of
the things I was fascinated with was sailing, so I spent a lot of time making
cardboard boats that I launched close to where the school sailing boats were.
The water, of course, made the boats wet and soggy, so they did not last long
and I made a new one. One of the schoolteachers gave me some balsa wood when I
was about 10 years old, so I could make a boat that was more durable. The
school had, as far as I remember, three or four cadet plywood dinghies and four
Enterprise dinghies, that I spent hours watching.” The last time I telephoned
Mick he had just completed an international course on navigation as he has the
dream of one day sailing to the Caribbean in his yacht. How early interests in
children develop!

Mick and I explored the main school area when the boys were
away on holiday or we cycled over to the Dall Burn and the gym. We were close
and adventurous, often doing things together outside. Collecting frog spawn in
a glass jar from the old curling pond was an annual occurrence for some years.
We sometimes encountered Hairy Dan, a well-known tramp, near the old gym or saw
him walking past our house up the back drive, pushing his ancient bicycle with
all his belongings tied or hanging on it. In May 2016, Alan Beaton told me more
about Hairy Dan, who benefited from the kindness of a few at Rannoch School.

“Dan used to come to the school and wait at the South Door (I
think it can be dignified with capitals!) for either myself or my friend Keith
Smith to happen along. We would take his billy can to the kitchen and try to
beg a "jeelly piece" from the domestic staff (Mrs Gibson - Ma Gibbo
we boys called her - was not averse to this practice). I often wondered what
became of Dan. I had heard that he had been prised off the ground, his (many!)
voluminous coats having frozen to the ground with him in them one particularly
hard winter. That was the last I had ever heard about him.

I don't know whether you have heard of Hamish Brown. He was a
schoolmaster from Fife and used to bring his kids to a base near the sawmill at
the bottom of the Dall burn (near or at where cadets from HMS Rosyth used to
stay). I never came across these boys (perhaps they were considered uncouth!!)
but Mike Haines used to marvel (with a degree of rueful envy) at the exciting
things Hamish Brown was doing with "his kids". After giving up
teaching he became a (probably the) county adviser for outdoor education. He
hated it and took himself off to do all the Munros in a single round, the first
person ever to do so.

One day a few years ago, I was reading something on Hamish
Brown's website about Rannoch and he mentioned Hairy Dan. Curious to know what
had become of him (I was, perhaps mistakenly, under the impression that Keith
and I were the only boys to whom Dan would consent to give up his billy can), I
contacted Hamish Brown to ask. There ensued a short correspondence culminating
in a meeting in Ullapool. Hamish didn't know any more than I did.

The following year (about 3 or so years ago) I was driving
along the road from Spean Bridge to Laggan. I gave a lift to a chap with a
ruc-sac. This man had been a forester at Rannoch and now lived in an isolated
spot along Loch Treig. He knew Dan and told me that the story about his having
been frozen to the ground was apocryphal. The truth is that a farmer (I think
from near the Barracks - Rannoch Station road) had taken him in (to a barn
perhaps) and that subsequently Dan had been transferred to hospital. This
ex-forester had come across Dan in subsequent years wearing proper clothes,
indeed he had been seen in a suit and was more verbal than he had ever been in
the Rannoch days. It wasn't clear what had happened but not a great deal of
time thereafter Dan had died.”

Life was spartan at Dall School House for my parents, especially for my mother.
We never had a telephone or television at Rannoch. If we needed to contact our
parents while we were at Breadalbane Academy in Aberfeldy, we would telephone
the MacLellan family and leave a message. I also remember watching television
for the very first time at the MacLellans’ house, together with Mick and the
two adopted MacLellan boys. Both Isabelle and I felt out of things at the
primary school whenever friends discussed programmes on TV. My sister mentioned
that “The Muppets” and “Miss Piggy” were popular in primary 6 and 7. On the
other hand, the other children envied us for our trips abroad to Switzerland.
In the days before cheap flights to Spain or Italy most children at Rannoch
either stayed at home during the holidays, were sent to a relative or

perhaps went to the British seaside.

Parents' Day 1973?

Back: Barbara + Isabelle

Front: Andrew + David MacLellan,
Mick

During
the first couple of years at Dall we had neither a washing machine – it was all
done in the bath - nor fridge, nor freezer. Our milk, in glass bottles,
sometimes went sour in the porch in summer or froze in winter. Later, if I am
correct, my Polish grandmother “Bunia” sent up enough money for these modern
conveniences to make life easier for my mother. We had an old school desk with
lid and no legs at the bottom of our drive beside the road which our family
used as a letter box.

Dall School House

Our
house was a typical two up, two down Scottish house. Upstairs there were two
bedrooms and a bathroom. On the left side of the house, downstairs, was our
dining room where we had an ancient Raeburn stove used to heat the room and
generally dry things in winter. It was the room most used by us all and always
kept warm. In winter my father would get up briefly at 5 or 6 in the morning to
put some more coal in the Raeburn to keep the fire going. Behind this room, at
the back of the house, was the small kitchen with a scullery added on behind.

We
also had a drawing room downstairs on the right side, not often used except for
formal occasions or for Christmas. The piano was in this room and my father
would disappear in there regularly, armed with an electric heater in winter, to
practise his piano scales and play some music. It all sounded very difficult to
us children as difficult pieces or sections were repeated. My father says he
played Chopin, Mozart and other composers. From time to time, there would be a
series of loud crashes. Some piano key or other was stuck, the result of the
damp Scottish climate as well as piano old age. My father then opened the lid
and tried to remedy the problem, frustrated at being unable to play properly.
Rather off-putting, so we were careful never to disturb him when he was in the
drawing room. Piano practice was a chore for him at Rannoch. My father
preferred being out in the Scottish mountains or on the loch fishing. It was
only after my father left Rannoch that he made something out of his musical
abilities, successfully teaching the piano in Billingham, in the north-east of
England, for many years.

Soon after we moved to Dall, my mother learnt to drive. Mrs
Reynolds taught her. I have a clear recollection of when my mother once drove
Mick, David MacLellan and me to the village. We ran out of petrol about two
miles from the village and I distinctly remember feeling the car hop along in
fits and starts before the engine gave up the ghost. My mother was in a
dreadful temper. We were told to stay quiet in the car – or else - while she
walked to the village to get help. There was also the local Girls’ Brigade and
Isabelle and I went to the weekly events, held in the manse located just off
the road to the south loch side. Kasia later also went. My mother did her best with
what was on offer for children at Kinloch Rannoch. When a dancing teacher from
Aberfeldy started offering Highland dancing in the village hall, Isabelle and I
were promptly enrolled and wooden swords organized from the village. Kasia was
later sent and I have a photo of her doing some Highland dancing for our guests
when my husband and I got married in Iwonicz in 1993.

Kasia on skis and
going down the hill on an MS plastic bag

My mother continued teaching us to swim at Dall. She took us
to the little swimming pool near the old gym, which still had its original roof
on then. We would put our swimming clothes on in the little changing room and
my mother would keep a close eye on us as we swam around. Some years later when
the roof had been removed and the swimming pool was open to the skies, Mick and
I would occasionally go there to swim. By then we were safe swimmers. We
clambered through the window and enjoyed a cool dip in the water of the
swimming pool, kept full by constant filtered water running into it from the
Dall Burn. Once I remember being put off by finding a frog swimming with us,
but then had fun with Mick trying to catch it. We didn’t use the pools in the
Dall Burn to cool off. Perhaps my mother, used to the clear alpine water of
Swiss mountains, disliked the dark peaty water which frothed over the rocks and
stones of Dall Burn, an advertisement for real ale, but unappealing to her.
Whenever it was hot in summer, there was another possibility, too. We would get
into the car and drive to Killichonan on the other side of the loch. There the
water was warm and shallow, the beaches were sandy and my mother could relax
and let us play safely.

Winter sports were important for us from an early age. We
initially had an old Swiss “Davos” sledge, which was not so good if the snow
was soft as the runners were narrow and tended to stick, two pairs of very long
Swiss wooden skis and lots of imagination. We used orange plastic bags - MS
survival material - for sliding down the hill in the field behind our house.
Occasionally, we joined the boys at the school sliding down the double banks
below the main building. However, that run was rather short and with time we
preferred the longer hill in the field, often also being joined by Rannoch
School boys. Isabelle once received skis at Christmas sometime in the late 1960s.
We all used them at some point.

During the winter of 1968 or 1969
there was a tremendous fall of snow, at least five feet remembers my father. He
took Isabelle with her new skis as well as a group of boys with him up Beinn a’
Chuallaich, the mountain behind Craig Varr. The slope up there is long and
gentle. It was long enough for Isabelle to learn how to ski, perhaps falling
once at the start before she got the hang of it. My father said that he was
impressed by her progress. A week later my father took a group of boys up the
mountain Carn Gorm behind the school. He still remembers the plumes of snow he
and the boys made while ski-ing down through the deep powder snow. Not a
proficient skier, my father stopped ski-ing soon after and the Swiss skis were
left in our shed until Mick started using them himself. Mick added, “We had the
skis and sledges that were available to us, but we learned to ski on wooden
skis with and without steel edges, and in old leather boots probably too large
for our feet. A lot of our time was spent building ski jumps that we hopped
over, quite often breaking the tips of the skis, which I then had to mend. I
also made our own sledges that worked, though not that well. Falling on skis,
with my hand and a ski stick breaking my fall is the reason for me having a
thumb joint that can bend further than normal.”

Skating was also popular. My
mother soon solved the problem of organizing skates for us. I remember being
told to stand on a piece of paper. She then drew round my right foot first,
then my left foot. The drawings of our feet were sent off to Switzerland and
skates duly appeared beneath the Christmas tree. I have a clear memory of us
all going up to the small reservoir, which tended to freeze over faster than
the big reservoir nearby, and my mother showing us how to skate forward and,
later, even backwards. From then on, whenever the big reservoir was deemed
safe, we went up to skate and have fun with the whole school. A wonderful
experience to have had! The Zaluski
family was amazingly healthy at Rannoch. In all the time at primary school I
was only once ill. We got the flu and I remember my mother wrapping us all up
warmly. My father made a fire in the drawing room and Dr Caldwell came to check
us. Within a couple of days we were better, but my mother decided to keep us at
home for the week as there had been a heavy snowfall. That was the only time I
was absent from primary school. My mother had Swiss nursing training and this
influenced how she brought us up. Freshly made healthy meals, lots of fruit and
vegetables, few sweets, puddings or cakes were important to her. Whenever we
fell ill, she prepared fresh orange juice for us. Hot honey milk or Ribena were
also prepared for sore throats, all simple but effective remedies.

Kinloch Rannoch
primary school 1-3, school year 1967-68. Barbara primary 2 is 1st row on far left side.
Michael primary 1 is 2nd row standing on far right side. Isabelle
primary 3 is 2nd row 5th from
left. side

It was during the summer of 1971
that my mother became ill. Auntie Ewa’s son had visited Poland and had met a
young woman there. They decided to marry so that she could accompany him back
to England. As Poland was on the other side of the Iron Curtain then, they got
married at short notice. Neither my father nor Uncle Iwo remembers exactly when
the wedding took place in Dunstable, just north of London. However, whether we
travelled from Rannoch, the north-west coast of Scotland or Switzerland where
we were usually on holiday, it doesn’t matter. It involved a long journey to London,
stressed adults all around and a very stressed excitable grandmother. Bunia
made lovely bridesmaids outfits for Isabelle, Kasia and myself. Isabelle said
she felt very pampered, standing in her pretty dress with Bunia pinning up the
hem to the correct length. Anyway, a few thoughtless comments by Bunia seem to
have been the proverbial “final drop of water”. Something cracked in my mother.
Straight after the wedding, we headed home. My father drove through the night
and the next day took my mother to Dr Caldwell in the village. He couldn’t help
her, unfortunately. Dr Caldwell suggested that my father should buy my mother a
dog to keep her company. Looking back, he wishes he had done so. A dog would
have got her to go out of the house and been good company for her while we were
at school. As it was, nothing changed and my mother carried on with her life at
Dall School House.

A few years after we moved into
Dall School House, the scullery was converted into a bedroom for Isabelle and
myself and the small kitchen window and old sink were replaced by a very large
window and a modern sink. Mick then stayed in the bedroom upstairs and Kasia
had a small bedroom at the back of the house, just off the living room. The
bathroom was upstairs and in winter my father always left the cold water of the
bath running a little the whole night through to prevent the pipes freezing. It
could be bitterly cold. I sometimes had to scratch away at the ice flowers on
the inside of the window panes to see outside and whether snow had fallen. My
brother Mick recently assured me that all the windows froze over like that in
the house, the only exception being those in the dining room. He wrote,“It
is true that the house had ice on the inside of the windows in the winter, and
we used single bar electric heaters to keep warm. The Raeburn was coal fired,
and I remember that we got ‘anthracite’ coal as it was the best for heating.”

It doesn’t appear to have been much better up at the school,
as Alan Beaton mentioned in the following email dated November 2016

“Your e mail arrived
at an apposite time as I have been much reminded of Rannoch of late. Our
central heating system gave up the ghost and we have had to have a new boiler
installed (at great expense!). We have been without heating for two weeks and
recently the temperature has dropped so that at night it is below freezing.
Thankfully, the new system is up and appears to be running OK. It all felt very
familiar though my children don't believe me when I say that the ink froze in
our inkwells, the lemonade bottles burst in the Tuck Shop and there was ice on
the inside of the Wade dormitory windows.”

My father was very busy teaching during term time, often away
with boys on expeditions at the weekends. He enjoyed his teaching and the life
at Rannoch School. At some point in the late 1960s he made the decision to get
a University of London degree in French. He just enjoyed the language so much,
he told me. There were no financial incentives as he wouldn’t have earned more
money. At Rannoch teaching qualifications didn’t matter, he told me on the
phone. Nevertheless, his French class results must have been more than adequate
over the years as we did stay at Rannoch for almost 20 years. It took him about
two years to prepare for the degree, going down to London twice to attend
lectures and staying with his mother in Ealing. In those days one just had to
turn up for the final exams and if you were good enough, you were given a
degree. My father passed. Nevertheless, it cannot have been so easy with four
children, working full time and living in such a remote region of Scotland. I
couldn’t resist including a French exercise, written by my father and given to
Dougie Pickering’s class (Potteries, 1969- 1974) on the 3rd December
1969. My father will be surprised to see it again! I’m just amazed that anybody
would keep school exercises for over 45 years. You can test your French
knowledge, admire the doodle decorating the bottom and thank Dougie for keeping
it that long! He admitted being an inadvertent hoarder to me. You’ll see more
of his hoardings in Part 2. Thanks to him I know the exact year when “MacBeth”
was shown at the gym and for the first time saw the programme for a parents’
day. My father usually just told us when to go and watch his MS show. The
services show (fire, ambulance, mountain, etc.) were always great fun to watch.

8. Kinloch Rannoch primary school

It was only while doing internet
research recently that I realized when the primary school in Kinloch Rannoch
was built. In 1965 this large modern building in the village replaced the
various small schools around the loch, including those at Dall and Bridge of
Gaur. It still stands, has been renovated recently and celebrated its 50th anniversary
in 2015. Looking at the photos of it today, it hasn’t changed at all!

Mr Wilson, the headmaster, leading the children from the old primary
school house to the new one, spring 1965. The two other teachers are at the
back.

There
is a “history” folder on the Kinloch Rannoch primary school website which I
browsed through. It was only then that I realized that by the time Isabelle
started school after the summer holidays in 1965, the school had just moved
from the old site on the other side of the road leading into the village that
spring. The old school was wedged between the Craig Varr hillside, the
waterfall coming down the hillside and the main road into the village. I read
on Facebook that the boys used to scramble up Craig Varr during their breaks.
One boy who went to the new school likened it to a prison, being unaccustomed
to the high fences, bent inwards at the top, surrounding it. Children were
forbidden to leave the school area during school time, only those who lived in
the village could go home at lunchtime.

We had
no sports hall, but Mr Wilson was keen on playing rounders with us in the
playground. I also remember sitting with friends behind the school on the grass
and picking daisies. We would take our thumb nail to the flower head and recite
to each other “Mary Queen of Scots got her head chopped off like this”, nipping
the flower off as far up and away as we could. Very Scottish! Making daisy
chains, hopscotch and other games kept us girls well-occupied. Occasionally,
special events were organized. There was a school concert for the parents in
the village hall when Mick, about 6 years old then, conducted the children and
waved his baton very convincingly to the music. Other parents told my father
that the primary school had had a similarly successful village hall performance
for parents a few years previously.

Kinloch
Rannoch village hall 2016

I had
my first experience of ceilidhs and we had a fun afternoon of Halloween
children’s games at this village hall. We hollowed out the biggest turnips we
could find and created Halloween lanterns at our dining room table to take with
us. It was hard work!

Mr Wilson was highly regarded in the village. However,
Isabelle, Mick, Kasia and I remember him as a strict and stern teacher. One of
the older generation, he used a strap on children. Mr Wilson mainly used it on
the boys to keep discipline and encourage them to use their brains. Mick
remembers being at the receiving end of “Schooly Wilson”, “He was really ‘old
school’ and the punishment for not being good enough is the main part of my
memories of him.

We stood around his desk and recited the multiplication
tables. If you ‘got it wrong’ you put your hand out and got a ‘tickler’. That
was one of the thongs of his strap (it had two worn thongs). No problem as long
as it only landed on your hand, and not up your wrist that is more sensitive.
If you did something wrong, it was the whole strap or belt. It hurt most if it
hit your wrist. I sometimes think the worst was after we played rounders as
part of the outdoor activities. If you did not catch a ball, or made a mistake,
you risked punishment with his plimsoll (gym shoe). For some reason, I remember
this hurt more than the strap. We were about 10-12 years old then.”

I once got strapped – a tickler? - in primary 6. I can’t
remember why. It didn’t hurt, but I suspect I got stubborn at something I
considered unfair and Mr Wilson didn’t know how else to deal with me! Girls
rarely got strapped. I felt relieved recently when a Scottish friend Shelagh
admitted that she had also been strapped at the age of about eight. Newly
arrived at the school, she had whispered something to the child beside her
during a period when the children were supposed to stay quiet and still. She
was promptly strapped by the female teacher in charge. Now, that I consider
unjust and harsh. Mr Wilson was the first and last teacher I knew who hit
children with the strap. I never saw corporal punishment being used at the
school in Aberfeldy. Breadalbane Academy must have been quite progressive in
that respect. Corporal punishment was banned in British state schools in 1987
and in private schools in Scotland in 2000. There’s a wealth of detail about
corporal punishment in state and private schools in Great Britain on the
website www.corpun.com.

Lovely photo of Kinloch Rannoch and Loch Rannoch taken from
Craig Varr

by Richard Paul, 2016, found on Facebook.

Alan Beaton was surprised to read that I was strapped at the
primary school. Here is his comment after receiving the first version of my
reminiscences,

“Talking of
punishment, I was surprised to read of your being strapped. I have never heard
of this happening to girls before (though in fairness I was only at
single-sexed schools from the age of 7 onwards). The cane was the instrument of
choice at Rannoch but at the school I attended prior to Rannoch I was strapped
several times and it certainly hurt! The secret was to try to lower one's hand
at the same time as the tawse (the Scottish word for the two-or three-pronged
strap) descended but it still left your hand burning and vertical marks on
one's wrist. We used to try to cool our hands by holding the cold iron legs of
our desks.”

I asked my father about
corporal punishment at Rannoch School and was treated to a 30 minute
conversation on the phone on various details followed by a comparison with his
own school, Ampleforth College, in the 1940s. At Ampleforth College the cane
was used for more serious offences, but boys were given lines for minor
misdeeds. He gave me an example of what he had to write, rediscovered while
reading many years later. You can take our word for it that Gladstone wrote to
Disraeli, “A sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated with the exuberance of his
own verbocity”. Would you remember a line like that at the age of 87! It is an
excellent example of how amazingly good my father’s memory still is and how
creative and fiendish the senior boys or monitors at Ampleforth were at finding
lines, frequently changing them on a daily basis.

As Alan mentions
above, the cane was used at Rannoch for more serious punishments (being caught
smoking was an example my father gave me). It was used by the Housemaster or
the Headmaster. For less serious offences there was PD (Penalty Drill) at
Rannoch School. This involved doing some unpleasant duty for a given length of
time. Picking stones from the pitches or weeding, for example. My father gave
PD for “loitering with intent”.

When I enquired about Simon and Alan’s memories of penalty
drill at Rannoch School, I got a wave of fascinating detail. On the 19th February
2017 Simon Stoker informed me,

“PD was given in increments of 15mins but
the punishment varied between houses. (Hence: "Jones - 15/30/60). It was
given by various bods with authority - Factors (in Potts anyway) could ask a
Cadet to confirm the punishment of 15, Cadets could give 15 or 30, Leaders - I
think - had no upper limit.

In addition, there
was a general PD book kept in the masters' hallway just outside the Dining Room
into which entries were made by any master. It was the duty of the house's PD
monitor to check this book on Weds and Sats and add any punishments to the
relevant miscreant's tally. Thus, some people might end up with 60, 120 or even
240 which had to be worked off in Free Activities on Weds and Sats. Naturally,
if there was a large amount and some not finished, it was carried over to the
next session.

In Potts early PD was
running round in circles with a brick held above the head!
This rather barbaric practice was replaced by something moderately useful such
as scrubbing down the cedar on the outside of the dorms with (usually) a piece
of broken glass, prior to the wood being repainted with oil. Sometimes it was
boring dirty work such as clearing paths etc. The whole point was the removal
of freedom, regardless of the activity.

This, of course, had
to be supervised. Personally (as a Cadet or Leader) I found it a tedious and
very boring task supervising the naughty ones but I suppose it was necessary
and any way I had done my own share ofit! I don't really know what the other houses did. I think Dall did go
in for stonepicking (also a general school punishment). I bet Wade had
something nasty, but Alan will tell you that!"

A day later Alan replied,

“Simon's account
chimes with my own recollections. I think the "brick above the head
PD" may have been universal in the first year of the school and abandoned
thereafter.

Contrary to Simon's
expectation, Wade did not have particularly nasty chores. Alfie's (Mike
Haines's) idea behind PD was that any offence was a transgression against the
community and therefore the retribution should be in the form of doing
something for the benefit of the community. (How this applied to the activity
of walking with one's hands in one's pockets, reckoned to be slovenly, I don't
know!). A particular Wade PD "favourite" was clearing weeds and
rubble from round the Wade buildings. There was a nice distinction to be made
between doing PD and engaging in the regular Wednesday activity of
Construction!

Some boys in my house
were so used to having PD that when asked by Mike to fill out their intentions
for the coming week or month filled almost all their anticipated free time with
PD!!”

Simon Stoker commented a few hours later, “I doubt it was Pat's idea to use bricks -
he was more practical and, like Alfie, expected something useful to come out of
punishment.”

According to the urban dictionary found on the internet “…a
brickhead is a person known to be simple. The idea is that they have a brick
head and therefore no brain”. You now have an inkling why Pink Floyd wrote
their hit song “Another Brick in the Wall” in 1979. What is also of interest in
the exchange of memories between Simon and Alan is how little they knew about
what was going on in other Houses. Curious to know what happened, Simon put it
round the exRannoch email “circuit.”
The first reaction was from Martin Williams (Wade 1962-67). “A book was kept in the common room, or on a board publicly
displayed. Wade tended to have a garden roster under Michael Haines (ALF). I
don't believe we were allowed to talk during the punishment period. I'm not
sure how the transfer was made house to house, it was a long time ago. ….. The
bricks were a Dall punishment, the punishments in Wade given out were seldom
physical punishment, and more like constructive activity. All came from
Gordonstoun and no doubt 1939-45 prisoner of war camps of Germany.”

Followed by Paul Duncanson (Wade, 1973-75), “My recollection was that apart from house
and school PD (given by prefects on one side and cadets and leaders on the
other), we spent our time with rucksacks loaded with stones, running up the
hill at the back of WADE for whatever time was given. There was no beating by
1973. Other punishments included cutting the grass with scissors and sometimes
some vaguely useful stuff – but of course this was not the point of PD, which
was designed to be specifically a complete waste of time....”

An interesting variation of useless time-consuming PD is the
following, thought up by the Wade housemaster after Mike Haines, and nicknamed
“The Commandant” by the boys. “I don’t
remember running with bricks above my head, in fact I remember little of the
various types of PD. However, one that does stick in my mind was having to
retrieve curling stones from the side of the reservoir. I do not know how the
stones were moved to the reservoir in the first place but those in the PD squad
walked up to the reservoir and we each had to take a rucksack. Each member of
the squad had one curling stone in his rucksack and then off we marched back to
the school. I found it particularly unpleasant/painful because the stone was
loose in the rucksack and the momentum going downhill meant that that it continually
banged into the base of my back with some force. Having just checked, that is
about 20kg of granite banging into your back – probably meeting the criterion
of a cruel and unusual punishment. Now, who should I sue? Kind Regards, David
Fortune (Wade 1965 -69).”

Here is another contribution from the early years. “Hello this is Bruce Nicoll, Croft 1963/
66. I remember the bricks episode that I think sprang from the fertile mind of
the head of house at the time, but it didn't last long as I think the Croft
housemaster put an end to it. I had the dubious honour of holding the record for
PD at Croft, 300 minutes between Saturday and Wednesday. However, my record
didn't stand long. McIntyre went and broke it with the same amount of PD that
was gained between Wednesday and Saturday! We both got beaten by our housemaster with the
usual, this hurts me more than it's going to hurt you! That was the only time I
ever got beaten at Rannoch. So, compared to my prep school where beatings
tended to take place every week, Rannoch was mild!”

And another longer contribution, this time from Dave Darby
(Wade, 1959-1962)

“Greetings all...Dave
Darby here from Vancouver Island BC. Barracks at Bridge of Gaur for the first
term, then, on the second term the dozen of us boys and housemaster Mike Haines
moved to the main school building and became Wade. I attended Rannoch from the
first term the school started until November 1962. Whilst at Rannoch I made an
application to join the Rhodesian Police, I was later successful in my
interview in London and flew out to join the force in April 1963. I remember
various punishments, I was caned by the Headmaster Dougal Greig for smoking. He
mentioned this to my father when he came on a school visit, I remember father
was rather pleased!! My father was a tea planter in Assam and I think only
visited the school once when he came to the UK on long leave. I seem to
remember a caning by Dougal was a bit of a big deal. Mike Haines caned me a few
times, I cannot remember what for, maybe bunking out and again smoking or
giving lip. The stripes on my bum would turn to bruises over the weeks and were
worn with pride in the showers!! I also remember running around the lawn in
front of Dall with bricks above our head, running up to that small lochan well
behind the school on the track to Loch Tay. I cannot remember getting into
serious trouble with my group of school pals, just boyish mischief. The
punishments at Rannoch were never in any way cruel or brutish and always taken
in good humour. The masters were in no way sadistic or tyrannical, looking back
they were a great crowd and real mentors and role models, especially to us boys
whose parents were abroad. Well, that is my tu'pence worth. Rannoch was a great
school, it certainly toughened a very young (I was three weeks past my 18th
birthday when I signed up!!) and wet behind the ears lad when he joined up in
Rhodesia.”

Here is a comment from Steve Scott (Cameron & Wentworth,
1979-1985) who was at Rannoch later. It contrasts with many of the earlier PD
comments.

“Up to 30PD -
circuits (1 for every 10PD). Run from the front of Dall, up past the chapel,
down the back drive, along the loch road, and back along the front drive.
Sometimes for a change it would be runs up the hill at the back of Cameron and
back down multiple times (this was known as the MacInnes track). Nightmare in
wet weather as it was extremely muddy and slippery! 40PD and over - labouring,
shifting rocks, gardening, litter picking, doing general maintenance type stuff
etc. BUT.... what usually happened was, if you got to Friday and had 30PD,
you'd try and get anther 10PD to avoid doing circuits, as the labouring was
much easier!”

As nobody from Dall had replied, Simon asked Keith Mackay
(Dall, c. 1972) what happened in his House.“I don't remember much about punishment
during the Cameron (junior house) years, though I do recall that the whole
house had to go over to the gym late one night for a very long workout with the
then housemaster. I think we had been caught in a dorm riot! He was a good guy, but as tough
as old boots if you crossed the line.”

Keith Mackay then
described the more extreme methods of punishment his Housemaster at Dall meted
out to the boys and the bullying that occurred. As they make sad reading, I
will skip them to avoid bringing back bad memories for those who had the
misfortune to have been allocated to Dall House then. Keith Mackay went on to
note,

“When they were laying
out the Chapel Square and knocking down the old steading, the Dall Housemaster
was in charge and he combined house and school PD into manual labour. We had to
run with rocks from the demolition site - over to the Dall Burn and then run
back with other rocks. During my time the Second Master was in
charge of school PD and he ran the thing like clockwork! …..There was a boy in
Dall who used to write up a very detailed diary of absolutely everything that
happened on a daily basis. None of us could understand why he bothered. But
now, it would be an excellent point of reference! Nowadays of course, in this
cotton wool society, many of the activities which we all took for granted,
would be deemed as criminal acts and assault. But I really don't think it did
any harm at the end of the day. There were always a few boys who seemed to be
subjected to excessive punishment and basically bullying. …..”

So, if a former Rannochian proudly tells you they were
involved in the construction, conversion or erection of some building or other
at Rannoch School in the 1960s or 1970s, first ask tentatively if that was a PD
duty or their contribution to the Construction Service. You can then make the
appropriate sounds of sympathy or interest!

My father told me that homosexuality and bullying were not
tolerated during the years he worked at Rannoch School, but of course he wasn't
aware of everything going on at the school. Bullying did occur, unfortunately,
and a lot depended on who the Housemaster was and whether the Headmaster found
out what was going on. When a member of staff, a music teacher named “Piano”,
made a pass at a boy in the school ambulance en route somewhere in the
mid-1970s, the news went around the boys like wildfire. My father remembers
that the relevant master couldn’t move anywhere outside his room in the main
building without the boys making loud vociferous “complaints”. “Piano” left
Rannoch soon after the incident.

The staff “sweep out” in 1965-66 marked a change from boring,
time-consuming but useful PD, based on the original aims and ethos of the
founders to form the boys into worthy members of society, to various forms of
punishment. Penalty drill evolved into punishment drill. However, it really did
depend on the Housemaster and how his House was run. On the 24th of
February 2017, Alan commented, “Simon's communication incorporating Keith's
reflections came as a surprise - naively, perhaps, I had thought that Rannoch
was always quite enlightened with regard to punishment. Not that I objected
then (though I would now) to canings or military-type running with rocks - it
is the spirit behind it that is so objectionable. ..... Mike Haines was always
adamant that boys should not be given too much authority or "power",
especially over more junior boys. I think Mike would have considered William
Golding's novel "Lord of the Flies" - (Kill the pig! Kill the pig!)
to be bang on the mark though I never heard him mention it.”

My father was never caned at Ampleforth, but he did get the
“stick” once from a Housemaster. At the end of “A Rannoch Memoir” he asked “…
do boys still get beaten for smoking? I shouldn’t think so. How boring it must
be for them… .”

When Alec Cunningham died in 2011, my father was very pleased
to note how many former Rannoch School boys attended his funeral at Kinloch
Rannoch, a number of whom he knew had been caned by Alec Cunningham. Cunningham
was highly respected at Rannoch School, both by the staff and boys. After his
retirement, he continued living at Dall with his wife and carried on with his
research on the history of the Rannoch area. You can still buy his booklet
“Tales of Rannoch” or his brochure on local clan trails in Kinloch Rannoch.

My father never ever laid a finger on any of us. It just
wasn't his style. He preferred the positive encouraging approach, avoided
quarrels and opted for discussion and consensus in the family rather than
confrontation. We did occasionally disappoint my parents, but they never made a
fuss out of it or punished us. We just knew we had done something our parents
didn't approve of. I tentatively asked Simon and Alan if he had treated Rannoch
School boys similarly. Here is Alan’s answer, seconded by Simon, “Your
recollections of not being punished by your father (or mother) accord with my
memories of Andre. That I recall, I never had cause to be admonished by him but
I thought of him as a gentle man and a gentleman. I think that would have been
the universal view.”

After that high note, we will now move on to a memorable
event in Rannoch School’s early years – the Duke of Edinburgh’s first visit.

9. The Duke of Edinburgh’s visit

A major highlight for Rannoch, but particularly
for the Kinloch Rannoch primary school and Rannoch School, was the Duke of
Edinburgh’s visit on the 27th May, 1969. Originally, he had been scheduled to
visit Kinloch Rannoch and the Army Youth Centre at Carie on the south shore.
Somehow, Peter MacLellan heard about this, strings were pulled, and the Duke
was persuaded to include a visit to Rannoch School on his programme.

I personally have no memories of
the visit, but after looking at the pictures and newspaper article on the
Kinloch Rannoch primary school website, I can assume that all the school
children were led by Mr Wilson and the other teachers to the village green near
Bunrannoch Hotel. There, we were lined up at a safe distance from the helicopter
landing area and encouraged to wave flags or handkerchiefs on his arrival. In
the photo below I can see some of my friends, little Lynn Duguid (very small for
her age) from Tummel Bridge in the front row with Lynn Wilson beside her and
Dorothy is among the children behind. Mr Wilson is standing behind the
primary school children to the left of the local minister at the back. I don’t
see any of the Zaluski children in the picture, unfortunately!

Perhaps we were
sent home before the cavalcade of cars headed along the south shore.

For our headmaster, Mr Wilson, it must have been a marvellous
day. He seems to have been given the honour of explaining about Kinloch Rannoch
and the scenery around to the Duke of Edinburgh as you can see in both
photographs below.

In the afternoon, the Duke visited Rannoch
School and was entertained by the emergency services, including the Mountain
Service in action. My father must have been proud of his MS as he explained to
the Duke what was happening as the boys slowly lowered the stretcher from the
roof top above the south door down to the ground. You can see the same Scottish
gentleman with bonnet and long stick as in the previous photos with Mr Wilson.
Pat Whitworth is standing beside him with his hands clasped behind his back,
two firemen stand ready nearby and the ambulance service is waiting to take the
injured person as soon as he reaches the ground. On the right the stretcher is
further down the wall than in the first photo, though it looks very tricky at
that point for whoever was abseiling with the stretcher and bracing himself
with his legs against the wall. Alan Beaton wrote to me that in the MS this
person was aptly called the “barrow boy”.

In both photographs you can see the rooftop windows above
Wentworth House, the part of the main building around the South Door which was
named after Captain Wentworth, the previous owner of Dall
estate.

Finally, this school
photograph is the last I have of my primary years. It’s also the
first in colour and can be found among the “unknown years” in the “history”
folder of Kinloch Rannoch primary school. It’s of primary 6 + 7 (1972 – 1973).
I’m the second from the left, front row and Mick is on the far right, grinning
at the photographer. If you look carefully, you can spy the prison-like fence
around, keeping the children in and stopping balls from going out. In the top
left hand corner, you can also see the white railing leading up to the former
village primary school. I remember the girls’ names Toni Douglas and Dorothy?
on either side of me with Avril Geddes, Jennifer Duncan, Beatrice and her older
sister Lizzie Duncan. Lynn Duguid is at the other end of the bench.

Apart from Lynn Duguid, I don’t know what became of the other
girls. Of the boys, Ian Rose’s (3rd from
left) older brother Ron still lives in Kinloch Rannoch and George Reynolds (4th from
left) is now a Typhoon Aircraft Life Support Engineer, living in Saudi Arabia,
but he regularly returns to Rannoch. I found both on Facebook. I didn’t have
much to do with either at school, but I met Ian Rose’s older sister Margaret in
Berne in the mid-1980s where she was the cook at the British Embassy. It’s a
small world.

10. Thoughts

Looking back, over 40 years
later, I feel I could pick up ties with those who went to Kinloch Rannoch
primary school with me if I wanted to, whether they still live in Rannoch or
not. We were taught well at the primary school and we all made friends, something
which helped us to adjust to secondary school life in Aberfeldy. We were
settled and content with what we had at Dall School House. Mick and I were also
gradually becoming bolder as we got older, aware that we could use the Rannoch
School facilities on our doorstep. That will be dealt with in the next part
which covers my teenage years.

If you upturn a stone anywhere in
the highlands of Scotland, you unearth several others underneath. We used to
joke how rich Scotland was in granite. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed upturning quite
a few stones and jogging my memories and those of others while compiling
information for this tale. Others are best left buried, either because they are
not suitable for public consumption or they simply make sad telling.

This account of my early
childhood and primary school years is the longest text I have written since I
graduated from the University of Berne in the summer of 1990. For the last two
decades or more, the longest have been my Christmas letters and also the
Zaluski Family Information letters, though the latter have been getting
progressively shorter. Writing this has forced me to re-assess my own knowledge
of the English language. It’s deteriorating and living abroad doesn’t help at
all! Alan Beaton’s comments on whether I wanted to use American or English
English made me realize that the blue lines under words was primarily Microsoft
Word’s “English”. It didn’t like “marvellous” with two “ls”, nor did it accept
“particularly” though “in particular” was alright. On the other hand, it didn’t
protest at my wrong spelling of “fare” as “fair”. That spelling mistake was
left for my father to discover.

Barbara Grimm-Zaluska, west coast of Scotland, 2016

At the state schools in
Switzerland, teachers are expected to attend a certain number of further
education course hours (known as CPD, “continuing professional development”, in
Britain as Alan informed me). I wonder if my headmaster would accept this tale in
lieu of course hours this school year? I have undoubtedly spent a lot of time
and energy on it, as well as pondering on how, what and whether to say this or
that. My active English knowledge has certainly improved in leaps and bounds as
I have dredged up suitable expressions and vocabulary seldom used for years to
express myself.

Simon Stoker originally asked me in May 2016 whether my father could write up
something about our time at Rannoch for his exRannoch website. As my father
cannot type much now due to shaking hands, I took the task on and it grew from
there. I am grateful for his encouragement and research help with Rannoch. Alan
Beaton has been marvellous with the editing, checking that my Rannoch facts are
correct and adding his own personal memories and additional comments. Uncle
Iwo’s enthusiastic suggestions for improvements have also been very welcome. As
it was Simon Stoker whose original request led to “A Childhood at Rannoch,
1963-1981”, my main readers are former Rannoch School boys and their families.
Nevertheless, I hope it will also interest my own extended family, those who
live in Kinloch Rannoch or who know me in Switzerland.

Bibliography of Part 1

1. “Rannoch Anthology, 40 Years
On”, edited by Alec Cunningham and Daphne Banks, published in 1999 by Rannoch
School.